Religious Language
Cognitive – conveys factual information, they can be shown to be true or false
Non-cognitive – cannot be verified by sense experience cannot say whether it is factual or not
Analogy – an attempt to explain the meaning of something which is difficult to understand by
comparing it with something that is more securely within our reference frame
Analytic – a statement that is true by definition
Synthetic – a statement that is true according to evidence
Blik – is an unfalsifiable conviction that is still meaningful to the world
Verification Principle
The meaning of a statement is its method of verification. Verification is by sense experience, if a
statement can be checked to be true or false, it can be verified and therefore has no meaning.
Challenge from the verification principle:
Ayer argues that religious statements cannot be verified in practice or principle.
This means that they are meaningless.
Religious and moral statements have no factual content so are neither valid or invalid.
Strengths:
It makes a straightforward demand for verification through sense experience.
It is in line with empirical science.
It makes a valid demand for realism in what we say about the world.
Some religious statements can be said to be verified by observers of the time such as the
gospels.
Weaknesses:
It dismisses things such as history, art and music as meaningless.
Science deals with unobservable entities so the verification principle should dismiss science,
which it does not.
It does not recognise that religion itself offers a reasonable explanation for the origin of the
world.
The verification principle itself cannot be verified.
Cognitive – conveys factual information, they can be shown to be true or false
Non-cognitive – cannot be verified by sense experience cannot say whether it is factual or not
Analogy – an attempt to explain the meaning of something which is difficult to understand by
comparing it with something that is more securely within our reference frame
Analytic – a statement that is true by definition
Synthetic – a statement that is true according to evidence
Blik – is an unfalsifiable conviction that is still meaningful to the world
Verification Principle
The meaning of a statement is its method of verification. Verification is by sense experience, if a
statement can be checked to be true or false, it can be verified and therefore has no meaning.
Challenge from the verification principle:
Ayer argues that religious statements cannot be verified in practice or principle.
This means that they are meaningless.
Religious and moral statements have no factual content so are neither valid or invalid.
Strengths:
It makes a straightforward demand for verification through sense experience.
It is in line with empirical science.
It makes a valid demand for realism in what we say about the world.
Some religious statements can be said to be verified by observers of the time such as the
gospels.
Weaknesses:
It dismisses things such as history, art and music as meaningless.
Science deals with unobservable entities so the verification principle should dismiss science,
which it does not.
It does not recognise that religion itself offers a reasonable explanation for the origin of the
world.
The verification principle itself cannot be verified.
